Steve Doerschuk: Super Bowl has come a long way

Saturday

The Super Bowl has gotten this big: A bad year is when the poor schmoe who can’t use his $1,000-face-value ticket has to scalp it for a lousy $1,500.

The Super Bowl has gotten this big: A bad year is when the poor schmoe who can’t use his $1,000-face-value ticket has to scalp it for a lousy $1,500.

Super Bowl XLIII is here in all its glory.

What must it have been like when it was new?

I can tell you this: It was fun to sit down for breakfast Saturday at Super Bowl I.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame election meeting was raging across the street. Dave Robinson, who sits on the Hall of Fame’s advisory board, did not have a role in the meeting.

He did, however, play linebacker in Super Bowl I.

At the table Saturday morning, Dave said he doesn’t like cold eggs. He likes to talk about cold football.

The first Super Bowl came off as a publicity stunt. The American Football League, no older than a first-grader, had finagled its way into a season-ending game against the king of a league founded in Canton a half-century earlier.

“Some people didn’t take the game real seriously,” Robinson said. “Brother, Vince did ... and he made sure we did.

“We went out to L.A. a week early, because the league made us. Our curfew was 11 p.m.

“Vince told us, ‘If you’re a minute late, it’ll cost you $2,500. Any later than that, it’ll cost you whatever I say.’

“Nobody missed the curfew. Max McGee said he snuck out of his room.”

Super Bowl I was played on Jan. 15, 1967. Many thousands of $10 tickets went unsold.

Yet winning was priceless to Lombardi, who had taken lots of his material from Paul Brown, the great coach from Massillon.

“In the old AAFC, Paul would start his practices too months before the NFL did,” Robinson said. “Vince would go there and study Paul’s system.

“When the Browns jumped to the NFL in 1950, they were supposed to get destroyed, but they beat the Eagles in the championship. One of the first things Vince told us before the first Super Bowl was how embarrassed the NFL was when Cleveland won that game in 1950.

“He told us we had no business embarrassing the NFL like that.”

Len Dawson, an Alliance guy, was Kansas City’s quarterback. He made Lombardi nervous with a touchdown pass that pulled the Chiefs into a 7-7 tie.

“Lenny told me later that the Chiefs didn’t take our blitz too seriously, that we would only blitz three times a game,” Robinson said. “At the start of the second half, Lenny dropped back, and we came with a three-man blitz.”

Seven Packers fired on Dawson.

“I got close enough to see Lenny’s eyes,” Robinson said, making a face.

“They were this wide.”

Dawson hurried the throw. Willie Wood intercepted and ran 50 yards to set up an Elijah Pitts touchdown run. McGee, the man who cheated curfew, later caught a TD pass from Bart Starr.

The Packers won Super Bowl I, 35-10.

They made it back to the AFL-NFL game by beating Dallas, 21-17, in the famous “Ice Bowl” in Green Bay. They would face the Raiders in Super Bowl II.

“Vince didn’t want to go to Miami any sooner than we had to,” Robinson said. “We were meeting inside, and he wanted to practice outside.

“Vince went on about what a quick practice it would be. The way he kept telling us it wasn’t that cold we looked at each other and kind of knew he was sending us out into 80 below.

“The offense practiced with the wind at their backs. The defense was facing into the wind. A defensive coach’s eyes teared up. You could see the droplets freeze on the spot.

“One guy’s contact lenses froze to his eyeballs.”

The Packers flew to Miami the next day. Long before it returned to Florida, the Super Bowl took off, too.

Contact Steve Doerschuk at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com.

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